Russellville aldermen are looking into the Public Works Department's contract labor expenses.

During Thursday's City Council meeting, local aldermen approved the city's General Fund, Special Funds, and Capital Funds budgets. The Street Fund budget was approved with the exception of a contract labor line item and an engineering services line item.

Those two items will be reviewed at a later date.

Initially, Alderman Garland Steuber requested omission of the entire contract labor line item. He later withdrew that motion in favor of tackling the two aforementioned items at a later meeting.

He continued to say some of those funds spend on contract labor are for tasks that should be performed in-house.

Finance Director Jerry McKaughan said the engineer the city does the most of its contract work with billed the city for approximately $110,000 in 2013.

Public Works Director Michael Oakes was not present at Thursday's meeting, but he was contacted by The Courier to ask if it would be more efficient to hire an additional staff engineer to handle the workload rather than contract the work out.

Oakes said it is very common to have an engineer on retainer for specialized tasks, and even if the city were to hire an additional engineer — to which he said he would not object — there would still be some projects, especially design and hydraulic modeling, that would have to be contracted out.

The City Council is expected to address the matter at its January meeting.